Yes, There Have Been Aliens

[Uncle Joe]

(snip)

Or consider the average lifetime of a civilization. Humans have been using radio technology for only about 100 years. How much longer will our civilization last? A thousand more years? A hundred thousand more? Ten million more? If the average lifetime for a civilization is short, the galaxy is likely to be unpopulated most of the time. Once again, however, with only one example to draw from, it’s back to a battle between pessimists and optimists.

(snip)

In our recent paper, Professor Sullivan and I did this by shifting the focus of Drake’s equation. Instead of asking how many civilizations currently exist, we asked what the probability is that ours is the only technological civilization that has ever appeared. By asking this question, we could bypass the factor about the average lifetime of a civilization. This left us with only three unknown factors, which we combined into one “biotechnical” probability: the likelihood of the creation of life, intelligent life and technological capacity.

You might assume this probability is low, and thus the chances remain small that another technological civilization arose. But what our calculation revealed is that even if this probability is assumed to be extremely low, the odds that we are not the first technological civilization are actually high. Specifically, unless the probability for evolving a civilization on a habitable-zone planet is less than one in 10 billion trillion, then we are not the first.

To give some context for that figure: In previous discussions of the Drake equation, a probability for civilizations to form of one in 10 billion per planet was considered highly pessimistic. According to our finding, even if you grant that level of pessimism, a trillion civilizations still would have appeared over the course of cosmic history.

(snip)

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/12/opinion/sunday/yes-there-have-been-aliens.html?WT.mc_id=2016-KWP-AUD_DEV&WT.mc_ev=click&ad-keywords=AUDDEVREMARK&kwp_0=168169&kwp_4=687656&kwp_1=350075&_r=0

This is a thought provoking analysis.

[SheriffBob]

1. Neil Young

"After The Gold Rush"

[saidsimplesimon]

13. Neil Young is a wonderful human being.

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[PJMcK]

2. Thats a very rational perspective

I enjoyed reading this column. Thanks for posting it Uncle Joe.

It's the height of arrogance to think that humans are the only intelligent life-form in the universe. The building blocks for life, i.e., the basic chemistry, physics and biology, exist throughout the universe. Given the incredible hugeness and age of the universe, how could it be that we're the only ones?

It's always bothered me that those people with sincere religious faiths would diminish the power of their god by thinking that we were the only ones that were created. Which such power, an omnipotent god could do anything anywhere so why would they stop on one tiny little planet in the outback of an undistinguished galaxy? I would expect such a force to try everything everywhere!

Actually, it's always struck me as somewhat of a cosmic joke that the solar systems and galaxies are so very far away from one another. In traditional science experiments, it's very important to isolate each variation of the experiment so as to prevent cross interference between the individual variations. By the incredible distances we face in space, it's extremely difficult, if not impossible, for species from different planets to visit one another thereby "polluting" each experiment. Perhaps the creator of the universe wanted to try many different things in many different places.

[CrispyQ]

4. Thanks for a thoughtful commentary.

I especially enjoyed your last paragraph. It would make an interesting sci fi story.

[eppur_se_muova]

11. The Well World series sort of outdid that ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well_World_series

and there have been other variations on that theme, as well.

[RoccoR5955]

3. I believe that there are aliens

Living right here. How else do you explain the conversion of the planet to a hotbox, other than to be reforming it to be more hospitable to them.

[PJMcK]

5. As the musician Joe Jackson wrote:

"I believe the aliens have to take a physical form on our planet.
So why not one with thirteen channels?"

(For anyone born after 1985, Mr. Jackson wrote this back in the early days of cable television. Most homes still had analog broadcast TV which generally was limited to 13 regular VHF channels.)

[RoccoR5955]

6. Uh, there were not 13 channels.

There were only 12. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13. That only makes 12!
I often wondered where the other one was when people mentioned that.
(oh, I used to sell TVs wholesale back in those days)

[PJMcK]

7. Didn't your TV have the special, secret extra channel?

Dammit, Rocco, you're right. But the lyric is still pretty funny!

[jberryhill]

8. Channel 1 had all the best stuff

[William Seger]

19. It still does!

[chknltl]

10. So that's why channel UHF never worked.

It did have an enthralling static if you ate enough mushrooms though.

[jberryhill]

20. That was the best way to contact aliens

[Major Nikon]

14. There were more than 13 channels

There were 19 VHF channels at one time which were whittled down to 13 for a short period of time until channel 1 was deleted and the 12 in existence today remained. There weren't many televisions around prior to that point.

[DirkGently]

9. Seems reasonable.

Contact by an existing intelligent civilization while ours still exists however, might be extremely unlikely.

[saidsimplesimon]

12. Uncle Joe, K&R for those who

seek "thought provoking analysis" in a sea of intelligent people spewing bs to the lowest common denominator.

Schrödinger's cat is a experiment for the mind. There are alternative outcomes to the bleak future that some predict, imo.

[JoeOtterbein]

15. Thanks Uncle Joe, now the Fermi Paradox is even more mysterious!

[Uncle Joe]

22. This article and the Fermi Paradox suggest to me that

the life spans of advanced civilizations aren't that long, probably due to an inability to find the sweet spot between a holistic/in harmony with nature mentality and the communal/entrepreneurial drive to expand into the stars beyond their homes.

I can see most if not the vast majority succumbing to environmental degradation, disease, collapse of resources, global war or a massive asteroid strike, with the best case scenarios; them being able to survive until their own suns eventually died out.

The extremely rare exceptions being those that mastered space travel competently enough to escape their solar systems and colonize other habitable planets.

[JoeOtterbein]

23. I agree that the exceptions are extreemly rare due to those factors

and many other barriers, including the vast distance and the time needed to get around their own small corner of the galaxy enough to find a suitable environment to explore/exploit. I think it was Alan Watts who talked about the universe "growing" intelligent life. I think he may have had a point. And maybe the "fruit" never fall that far from their "tree", so we are unlikely to encounter them.

But then again there are other very intelligent creatures right here on earth, perhaps some such as apes and whales who actually know much more about alien intelligence than we do!

[LuvNewcastle]

17. There very well may be other

Intelligent life on this planet that our senses aren't equipped to perceive, at least most of the time. There are supposedly 11 dimensions, and we can only perceive 3 of them. As far as species go, we are like the blind, deaf man with his hands stuck out in front of him, stumbling in the dark and begging for something to touch.

[red dog 1]

18. Could Donald Trump be an alien?

Probably not....Aliens are supposed to be smarter than we are, not dumber.


A great book about aliens is "Invisible Residents" by Ivan Sanderson.

[niyad]

21. thank you for this very interesting article.

I have always thought that it is the height of arrogance to think that we are, have been, and will be, the only intelligent (and, considering the reichwingfundienutjobs, I used that word advisedly) life in the universe.

[struggle4progress]

24. The problem is that we have NO rational basis for estimating any of the probabilities

[Uncle Joe]

25. Evolution here on Earth and the sheer, overwhelming magnitude of other like conditions

in the Universe are a rational basis.

[struggle4progress]

27. What exactly is needed? Intermittently drying tidal pools? Or intermittently drying tidal pools

plus an enormous serendity? Or oceanic hydrothermal vents with adequate sulphur? Or oceanic hydrothermal vents with adequate sulphur plus an enormous serendity? Or intermittently drying tidal pools AND oceanic hydrothermal vents with adequate sulphur? Or intermittently drying tidal pools AND oceanic hydrothermal vents with adequate sulphur AND an enormous serendity?

[Uncle Joe]

28. If you're speaking about good fortune or luck, from my understanding of the

Universe; it all began from one small localized area made up essentially of the same stuff; before the Big Bang; everything came from that.

I can't even begin to imagine the odds of our microscopic blue marble receiving all the serendipity that the Universe has to offer.

[struggle4progress]

31. With 100 billion or so galaxies, there's perhaps plenty of possibility for unimaginably strange

and unlikely chemical serendipities -- none of which is in any way required to resemble anything we would be able to recognize as "life" or as "civilization"

[Uncle Joe]

32. I have no doubt there are all forms of life out there.

Insofar as "advanced" or "civilized" are concerned, we might just be in the middle of the pack.

[Warren DeMontague]

33. We have a few data points. The ridiculously huge size of the known Universe. The fact that planets

are plentiful. The fact that water is abundant in the cosmos, even in our solar system. The fact that liquid water exists in places we hadn't even really thought of a few decades ago, like under the ice of moons of planets like Jupiter and Saturn.

These, we know.

So, yes, we have a sample size of exactly one for life- and intelligent civilizations- however, given the sheer size of the rest of everything that we would be dealing with, it seems infitesimally unlikely that we would be the ONLY intelligent civilization anywhere, ever.

Now, how frequently life arises and how frequently it evolves into intelligent, civilization-forming creatures capable of asking these questions, yes, we don't have enough to go on to come up with anything like a good guess. Too many unknonwn variables.

Still, I suspect we are on the threshold of answering some of those questions in coming decades.

[exboyfil]

26. Unless they are in our own galaxy it

is irrelevant. I would add another factor to the list. Creation of life from all observable historical evidence and even current experimentation is highly probable. Getting to multicellular life appears less likely. I think the jump to technological (even low level) appears to also be very unlikely (think about we have found no evidence of tool use for dinosaurs even after 66 million years). Also protoprimates to us took 60 million years.

Kepler results lead to estimates of 40 billion planets in our galaxy that are in a star's habitable zone as we currently understand it. 40 billion is a big number but it quickly gets whittled down by probabilities. How many of these planets are habitable as we move towards more densely packed portions of the galaxy (lots more EM radiation, rogue planets, etc). We live in a nice suburb.

I would love to be proved wrong though.

[Uncle Joe]

29. "The Universe in 4 Minutes."

[Uncle Joe]

30. "The History of the Universe in 10 Minutes"